Far from the polish and gloss of Apple, Google and Microsoft’s recent launch events, a subtle revolution is changing the way we interact with mobile technology. The cumulative effect of three new dynamics – notifications, deep linking and proactive assistants – will have profound effects on mobile products and services. Individually, these changes might seem like nothing more than surface tweaks. Combined, it could mean brands must completely rethink how consumers discover and use their services in a mobile world even more tightly controlled by the industry’s Goliaths. Notifications, the first game-changing new dynamic, may have begun as simple signposts, but have rapidly become lightweight apps in their own right. Since the 2013 launch of Apple’s iOS7, which demonstrated the convenience of being able to access simple functions from a smartphone’s lock screen, such functions have transformed into interactive notifications. Now, a user can do everything from answering a tweet to shopping without entering a main service app. In a world driven by content and context – rather than any one specific device – information must be conveyed in a way that can be acted upon regardless of screen: smartwatch, smartphone, tablet or laptop. Which is why quick, glance-able notifications are on their way to becoming the “full” experience themselves. With the average smartphone user having 36 apps on their phone1, but using only one in four daily, brands can no longer expect users to view the bank of app icons as their primary point of entry into an experience. As notifications become richer and more interactive, users will spend progressively less and less time inside the app itself. Deep linking will allow personal assistants such as Apple’s Siri, to take a huge step forward in their precision and power.
Research done by app analytics firm Localytics2, however, shows that notifications can be beneficial to brands.
According to their work, 52 percent of users agree to allow notifications from an app, and these users’ engagement levels are much higher than average, with 88 percent more app launches and a much lower likelihood of app abandonment. But this very precise and targeted form of user engagement has parallels in the second major dynamic: deep linking. Deep linking is something that we do routinely on the web each day, clicking on a link on one page to take us to a precise location in another – but this is only now reaching mobile apps. Just as a link in an e-mail forwarded by a colleague takes the user to a precise page in a website, a mobile app’s deep link sends the user to a precise location inside an app. Unlike the web, though, deep linking in the mobile-app world has long been a mess of inconsistent formats, meaning that different sets of links are required to access the same app on a different mobile operating system. But this problem is now well on the way to being solved. Without deep linking, app users spend an increased amount of time inside apps searching for the right content. In doing so, they pass through multiple different pages on their way to the right destination, something that’s valuable to those using mobile marketing as a source of revenue or acquisition. With deep linking, app users are guided straight to the content they’re seeking. This is a double-edged sword for brands and marketers. On the one hand, it reduces the amount of time spent inside the app, which reduces engagement time. On the other hand, it increases the potential for better targeting as the user quickly sees the most relevant content: less time, higher quality engagement. Coupled with the precise, shortened action suggested by notifications, we can see how working through a bank of app icons as a primary interface becomes less and less relevant. But it’s how that deep linking is being leveraged by the key mobile operating systems that reveals the third dynamic. 21